Impact Technology

Dr. Mark Wilkinson, IMPACT’s Founder, received his doctorate in chemical engineering from MIT and first worked at Cabot Corporation. While at Cabot, Mark was instrumental in developing and commercializing technology for producing novel carbon blacks resulting in the publication of numerous innovative process patents.

Mark then moved onto a new exciting start-up company that was developing a novel recycling technology. The technology was based on the dissolution and conversion of wastes in high temperature molten metal baths resulting in the production of commercially viable recycled products. The company, Molten Metal Technology (MMT), was renowned for its high concentration of extremely talented technical personnel that exhibited both depth and breadth of technical expertise, vision, and leadership.

While experiencing the extraordinary opportunity to lead such a strong team of technical talent while at MMT, Mark envisioned the value such a team would be for any company with an emerging chemical-based process or product. In January of 1998, this vision became the basis of the forming IMPACT Technology Development. The Goal: build a world-class technology development organization capable of helping any company attempting to develop, scale-up, or optimize a chemical-based process or associated equipment.

The company started small, with four original team members: Mark, Dr. Alain Bourhis (MMT co-worker), Charles Freeman, and office manager Natalie Kent. As in all start-ups, the team worked diligently over the next several years building the foundation of the firm one client at a time. Success was achieved by the application of the following governing principles that eventually became the basis of the company’s mission statement:


- Provide high quality thought, execution, communication, and deliverables.
- Not only help build good technology, but help build good technology development companies through the implementation of work structures and procedures that last beyond the completion of our specific task or goals.
- Understand and adopt our clients’ goals as our own and relentlessly pursue their achievement through hands-on implementation support.

With each success came more referrals and the client base quickly grew and expanded into multiple markets including pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals and materials, microelectronics, and metallurgical. The broad applicability of IMPACT’s services across multiple markets is attributed to the fact that the fundamental engineering principles utilized in process development and scale-up can be universally applied to any chemical-based technology or product.

In 2002/2003, the company’s growth warranted the expansion of the team’s technical resources as well as the addition of business development and marketing resources. Steve Kessler and Fran McConville joined IMPACT bringing a combined technology development experience base of over 60 years. Both Steve and Fran have since become core technical leaders in the organization as well as being instrumental in helping to direct the overall strategic direction and growth of the company. William Cox, another MMT veteran, also joined the team as VP of Business Development and set out to formalize and articulate the company’s products and services to help grow the business and continue to attract talented team members.

In 2004, the company opened the IMPACT laboratory in Devens, MA to better serve clients by effectively expanding their laboratory space on an as-needed basis and providing access to specialized equipment and expertise. The laboratory has since proven to be a strong asset in strengthening our hands-on approach to performing process development and optimization. Since 2004, the lab has been expanded twice with the addition of a number of new process and analytical equipment including such notable items as a lyophilizer, particle sizer, rheometer, and centrifuge.

Over the last several years, the IMPACT client base has grown to over 75 clients and expanded into additional markets including carbon black, biotechnology, single-use process equipment, process separation technologies, alternate energy sources, medical devices, and flavors and fragrances. To meet this growth, the team is now up to 12 people with several more likely to join the team as of the writing of this in mid-2008.